The Boston area has long had an unusually strong interest in sweets. As we see from the numerous ice cream establishments, the huge concentration of candy manufacturers, the near-manic obsession with doughnuts, and the flourishing of companies on the cutting edge of chocolate and the cacao trade, Boston has been, and remains, a pioneer of the sweeter things in life.

Panel:
– Joyce Chaplin, James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History, Harvard University Department of History
– Michael Krondl, Author: The Donut: History, Recipes, and Lore from Boston to Berlin; Sweet Invention: A History of Desert; and The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of Three Great Cities of Spice
– Carla Martin, the Founder and Executive Director of the Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute and Lecturer, Harvard University Department of African American Studies

This is part of the series: Cooking Boston: How the Hub Shaped the American Diet

This six program series will explore the culinary history of Boston and the impact the city has had on the American diet. In the first half of the 19th century, Boston had a reputation as the center for European taste and refinement. By the end of the 19th century, the Colonial Revival movement nationally popularized foods like Boston baked beans and Yankee pot-roast shifting Boston’s image from refined to rustic. In the 20th century, Boston clung to two identities: that of thrifty Puritans and of cosmopolitanism through education. This created some remarkably bland food but also made the city fertile ground for a culinary revolution. In the 1960s, chefs like Julia Child and Joyce Chen brought the flavors of the world to America through Boston.
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